The Christian Century

In Flesh Made Word, Emily Holmes endeavors, with the help of French feminist theories, to understand several of the medieval women mystics who are most alien to 21st-century religious sensibilities. She does this by creating three pairs of authors. One woman in each pair is a present-day feminist theorist, and the other is a medieval mystic. I was not sure that these pairings would be productive, but Holmes’s strategy proves illuminating, exhibiting the subtlety and sophistication of modern and medieval writers alike.